Black history can provide timely lessons that put todays
policy debates in a new light. Take, for instance, the African-American
experience with the right to self-defense.

The story starts in September 1925, when Dr.
Ossian Sweet moved his family into a two-story home on the corner of Garland and
Charlevoix on Detroits east side. A prominent gynecologist and a graduate of Howard
University medical school, Dr. Sweet had studied and worked in Europe  including a
stint with Nobel Prize winner Madame Curie in Paris  before settling in Detroit.

One might expect that Sweet would be out of place in the poor, working-class
neighborhood. And he was. But it was not so much because of his wealth and education as
the fact that he was black and the neighbors were white.

After Sweet moved in, a mob of hundreds gathered across the street and grew
increasingly ugly. The Waterworks Park Improvement Association, as the mob called itself,
had driven another black doctor out of his Detroit home some weeks before.

Anticipating trouble, a dozen police officers cordoned off the area for three blocks
around and walked up and down the street between the mob and the Sweet residence.

The Sweet family did their best to maintain an air of normalcy. Mrs. Sweet was in the
kitchen preparing dinner, and several family and friends were helping unpack, when the
crowd started howling and stones began pelting the house.

Dr. Sweet grabbed a gun and dashed to an upstairs window to get a better  and
safer  view of what was going on outside his new home. Just as he saw a car with his
brother, Henry, and a family friend pull up to the curb, a rock smashed through the window
and showered him in shards.

The now-terrified doctor ran back downstairs to let his brother and their friend into
the house as the crowd was screaming, Heres niggers! Get them! Get them!

Thats when the first shot rang out. In the ensuing pandemonium, no one is certain
how or in what order events then unfolded.

It is certain that six of the 11 people inside the house fired their weapons, as did at
least one police officer outside; in fact, he emptied his revolver. Two people in the mob
were struck  one fatally. The police, who until gunfire erupted had been little more
than spectators, stormed the house and arrested everyone inside, charging them all with
murder.

The sensational case polarized the city, but it ended up assigned to a judge whose
integrity and personal courage would one day make him a Michigan legend. This is the
opportunity of a lifetime to demonstrate sincere liberalism, remarked the
unflappable presiding Judge Frank Murphy, who immediately released Mrs. Sweet on bail.

Nor were the defendants wanting for high-powered representation. Clarence Darrow came
into Detroit to handle the case. This pioneer in the cause of equal protection
before the law spent three weeks on jury selection alone  most of it in a
painstakingly detailed recounting of the history of the black man in America.

Following a seven-week trial and three days of often acrimonious deliberations by the
all-white jury, Judge Murphy ruled that a verdict could not be reached and declared a
mistrial.

Prosecutors decided to retry only Ossians brother, Henry, who had freely admitted
firing his gun.

At the second trial, Darrow never denied that his sole remaining client may have fired
the fatal shot, but argued that the defendant was justified and acting in self-defense.
The second jury (also all-white) took barely three hours to return a not
guilty verdict.

As a consequence of this incident, the Ku Klux Klan  which operated much more
openly in those days  lobbied for and obtained the first round of restrictive gun
legislation in Michigan. The Public Acts of 1927 included the requirement that citizens
obtain government-issued purchase permits following mandatory safety
inspections. Even then, the opportunity to legally carry the weapon would be granted
only at the whim of (unaccountable) county gun boards.

Following racial unrest in major American cities across
the country in the early to mid-60s  culminating in the long, hot
summer of 1967  the next round of restrictions came from the federal
government in the form of the Gun Control Act of 1968. This legislation was modeled on the
German Weapons Law of 1938 enacted by the Nazi government.

A revealing feature of the contemporary gun control movement has been the persistent
drive to ban inexpensive handguns often disparagingly called Saturday Night
Specials  an epithet based on an old racist line that any kind of riotous
going-on was a Niggertown Saturday Night. And, indeed, it is pretty obvious
that, at the least, a ban on inexpensive weapons targets poor people, if not strictly
minorities.

None of this has proved effective in stemming violent
crime because criminals, by definition, do not respect the law. Nevertheless, those who
want to fully disarm the law-abiding have discovered a new tactic.

Since the courts have been unwilling and the Legislature unable to accomplish the goal
of gun control advocates, several major cities have decided that perhaps civil litigation
will hold gun manufacturers responsible for the misuse of their products and choke off the
marketplace of firearms.

People are waiting to see whether the mayor of Dr. Ossian Sweets hometown may
follow suit. Had Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer done so last week, it would have provided a
tragically ironic end to Black History Month. For, as Jews
have already discovered, disarming a people is only the first phase in attempting to end
their history entirely.

Tim OBrien of Allen Park is the chairman of the Michigan
Libertarian Party. Write letters to The Detroit News, Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette,
Detroit, Mich. 48226, or fax us at (313) 222-6417, or send an e-mail to
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